The days pass
And the sunlight wheels along the wall
Spinning golden music through some days
And heaping cold white silence upon others
But always it comes
And always it goes
And always it changes everything.
What is a beautiful thought?
What does it take to have one and say it?
Must it rhyme, must it have a cadence
Or can it just fall free from the lips or the fingers
Or the eyelashes of someone whose days
Are stretching long like evening shadows
And whose nights are full of wishes on stars that are just far enough away
Not to recoil
From all that longing?

Tell me, what are dreams for?
The madnesses of a sleeping mind.
Why do they pierce so, what's behind them?
Tell me why the stars are just as far away when I'm asleep
As when I'm not?

I am a match that has been struck
But waits, frozen in that tiny space of time between
For years and years,
Defying physics and logic,
Yearning for a flame that is half finished gasping its first breath.
Someday it will leap upon me and I can feel its almost-heat,
But that day is not of my choosing,
And I have been struck
Struck many times
Without being incinerated.
I've been struck in every way-
Like a lone tree on a high hill
Like the dented head of a nail that, foolish, bent the wrong direction-
And I've always felt the heat
I've always felt the blows rain down
But I've never truly been on fire.

I want my bones to fill up with fever
I want every inch of me to be complete
None of these cold hollows and little nooks and edges
That let the wind whistle through- no
I have been struck more than enough times
And I'm begging life to let me burn.
Where are my days going?
I felt the thrill of flames in my heart
I felt hot metal in my veins- the stuff of stars-
And now I'm waiting
Slowing and stalling as it cools inside me
And the days are wheeling by on my walls
Like an ***** grinder's cart that pulls the sun along
And the only thing worse than being struck
Is being unable to ignite.